“I only got 10 likes in the last 5 minutes
Do you think I should take it down?
Let me take another selfie.“
These are the lyrics of the selfie song by The Chainsmokers. The trend is so fly that the Oscars were an ode to the word of the year – the ‘Selfie’. We have seen semi-nude Franco selfies and inspirational fitness Jen Selter selfies. You can either love them or hate them, but you can’t ignore the onslaught of selfies. They are everywhere!
Selfies have received enough flak over time for their uselessness and self-adulation. Why do some people hate the selfie? Well we asked around and got some really interesting answers.
1. ‘Everyone who has a smartphone thinks they are a photographer’ – Photography as an art has apparently been sidetracked by the sheer number of people clicking their own pictures.
2. It makes you look narcissistic. In fact, ‘selfie addiction’ has been termed a mental disorder.
3. It is the newest form of self publicity. Yeah we are looking at you James Franco.
Well, despite all the ire selfies manage to evoke in some people, the #selfie trend refuses to bow down to virtual criticism. We give you 5 reasons why you should NEVER apologize for your selfies.
#1 Don’t Let The Internet Decide
Who makes these rules anyway? You have complete freedom to portray yourself in whatever manner you are comfortable with. You are just exercising your right to express and if in the process you irk a few virtual acquaintances, so be it! The Internet people will express dislike for almost everything, and you really can’t please ’em all.
Plus selfies are easy. “You don’t have to go around looking for another person,” says an avid selfie clicker. And there we have it. The master stroke of convenience has landed upon us. Another selfie fan mentions how it is the age of freedom, “Selfie gives us independence. There is only a self that limits the self“.
#2 Selfies Represent A Very Basic Self Love
Love your face. What is wrong with doing that? If Ellen Degeneres can do it with twenty other celebrated actors, who is to stop us? Remember the great artists have done it all along. #selfportraits?
#3 Selfies Challenge Status Quo
In an age where our worth is constantly being attached to how we look, selfies are a way of presenting ourselves in a way that is not fabricated. Though some call it narcissism, we can choose to be excited about ourselves if it makes us feel better. Of course this does not suit those who run the material world, because if we love ourselves and learn to defeat our insecurities, what can they sell us!
#4 Selfies Celebrate The Average
With the shutterbugs constantly bringing out the glamorous, the selfie does the exact opposite. It shows us the ordinary and the average that we should sit up and notice. It allows us to stop idolizing celebrities who make silly pouty faces just like us. We see them celebrating their biggest achievements with spur-of-the-moment selfies.
#5 Selfie Is The Great Equalizer
While we say that perfectly average is good enough, we also know that selfies are hardly ordinary. While they restructure celebrities into regular people, the trend has also given us run-of-the-mills the belief that we can portray our best selves through this media. And if Obama is in the trend, maybe we should not lag behind. At the end of the day, all of us are looking for those little picture perfect happiness moments!
The only quicksand-esque problem that is problematic is when the self-esteem of a person becomes intertwined with the comments or likes on a self picture. So instead of just terming the selfie trivial and annoying or ‘stupid’, you might want to think about the amount of thought that went behind a representation of a personal brand. The brand called YOU!
Graphics source: giphy.com